Fired teacher won’t get job back

A fired Halifax regional school board high school teacher, who during a hypomanic episode told a Grade 10 student to kill her parents with a chainsaw while they slept, will not be getting his job back.

Flinn, a highly regarded teacher with the board for over 15 years, had no prior disciplinary record before he sent the student a series of what the Appeal Court agreed were “grossly inappropriate’ emails that breached his duties under the Education Act. Flinn has no criminal record.

Flinn communicated with the student by email during the summer recess from June to September 2008. In December 2008, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder type II, which includes cyclic moods.

A year later, a second doctor confirmed Flinn’s diagnosis and said he would require ongoing treatment indefinitely.

Flinn’s emails to the student also included a reference to travelling to British Columbia to “rescue” her from her parents, a recommendation for her to purge food, comparisons of his desire to leave his wife for another woman and the student’s need to leave her parents, and derogatory names directed to the girl’s parents.

Her parents discovered the emails in September 2008 and contacted the school principal. On Sept. 15, 2008, when Flinn met with the principal, vice-principal, human resources manager and a union representative, he did not deny writing the emails. The next day he called in sick and remained off work until he was terminated in April 2010.

On Wednesday, the school board would not disclose where Flinn worked before he was fired.

“All parties in this case agreed to keep this information confidential in order to protect the privacy of the victim,” school board spokesman Doug Hadley wrote in an email to The Chronicle Herald. “The name of the school was not included in any of the court proceedings.”

Flinn’s union took the position that he was not responsible for his behaviour due to his psychiatric condition at the time.

In April 2010, Michael Christie, the school board’s director of human resources, recommended that Flinn be terminated for just cause.

“According to Mr. Christie, Mr. Flinn knew what that what he was doing was wrong and so was culpable,” the Appeal Court decision said.

The school board accepted Christie’s recommendation and dismissed Flinn.

He first appealed his termination to a board of appeal under the Education Act. In September 2012, the appeal board rendered its decision confirming his termination. Flinn then applied for a judicial review of that decision at Nova Scotia Supreme Court.

Flinn argued that the school board did not canvass all reasonable possibilities to accommodate his disability.

“It was not unreasonable for the Appeal Board to take into account the vulnerability of those students to whom the HRSB owed a duty to protect,” Scanlan wrote. “The Appeal Board was alive to the risk of accommodating Mr. Flinn and his disability. The Appeal Board properly considered the risk such accommodation would present to the children HRSB was obliged to protect.”

Flinn was assessed as a teacher who, all parties agreed, was suffering from a disability that affected his judgment, the decision said.

“That disability impaired his ability to set, and adhere to, appropriate boundaries with his students.”

The justices agreed with earlier rulings that having school staff and medical professionals monitor Flinn was not practical, sufficient or adequate, in view of the risk.

While there are many different disabilities that can and must be accommodated by employers, the duty to accommodate has limits, the court said.

The Human Rights Act permits discrimination where it is “based upon a bona fide occupational requirement.”

And in Flinn’s case the need to protect vulnerable persons with whom he would interact would fall under that category.

In dismissing Flinn’s appeal, the Appeal Court ordered him to pay the school board $2,500 in costs.